The annual Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company's General Manager's conference will be held in New Orleans from March 31, 2008 - April 4, 2008, but more importantly on Thursday, April 3rd the General Manager's spouses will award forty (40) custom-embroidered professional chef's jackets to the students of Cafe Reconcile!

A dozen of the General Manager's spouses will accompany Mrs. Marcelle Cooper, wife of COO Simon Cooper, to Cafe Reconcile. After a tour, they will enjoy a lunch prepared by the students. To thank them for lunch and to reward them for their participation in Reconcile's Youth Workforce program, Mrs. Cooper and the spouses will present the professional chef's jackets from Cintas Uniforms to the students.

The spouse's partnership with Cintas is in keeping with the GM's conference theme of One Brand, One Vision, One Voice; two hospitality entities, The Ritz-Carlton and Cintas, came together as one. This speaks to the mission of Cafe Reconcile's Youth Workforce training program. The program was developed for at-risk youth between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five to learn the basic skills that would enable them to successfully enter the city's second-largest non-governmental workforce, the hospitality industry.

Mrs. Marcelle Cooper, wife of Chief Operating Officer Simon Cooper, came up with the idea of donating chef's jackets and Cintas responded immediately. The goal of the partnership is to foster a sense of pride and to make the students feel like hospitality industry ambassadors.

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. is an icon in the luxury hospitality industry. The company was founded in 1983 but its lineage dates back to 1898 when legendary French chef and restaurateur Georges Auguste Escoffier and hotelier Cesar Ritz opened the Hotel Ritz in Paris. The gift of the chef's jackets to the students illustrates the company's continued commitment to the culinary arts. That commitment is also evident in some of the company's new and newly renovated properties where celebrity chefs like Wolfgang Puck, Gordan Ramsay, Eric Ripert, Laurent Tourondel, Norman Van Aken and Dean Fearing have opened signature restaurants.

In 2007 alone, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company donated over $7.4 million in products and services to charitable organizations, while employees contributed over 40,000 hours of volunteer work. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. of Chevy Chase, Md., (USA) currently operates 70 hotels in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Over 20 projects are under development around the globe. The Ritz-Carlton is the only service company to have twice earned the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which recognizes outstanding customer service.